As part of our Global Sonic Cultures lecture series, we studied the troubled and complex term of the ‘borderscape’, and the multitude of meanings and Jacob Kirkegaard’s 2020 piece Membrane was somewhat controversial among the group. What I’m sure was a well-intentioned sonic commentary on political, social and national divisions between the United States and Mexico,
Kirkegaard had placed contact microphones, capturing the vibrational qualities of the wall. It sounded dark and frightening, which unfortunately felt cliched in light of the political and social reputation the border wall holds. There was an uncomfortable sense of the artist as disaster tourist. I am vehemently against the suggestion that artists only work with what they know, yet I wonder what relevant perspective can be brought beyond an exercise in recording technique and revelling in the traumatising severity of the situation, adding or signifying nothing.
‘Border Cantos’ from 2016 by Richard Misrach and Guillermo Galindo was far more successful. Alongside Misrach’s large photographs, Galindo creates musical instruments from found objects discarded and lost by those making border crossings. ‘Limpia (Cleansing)’ was rich in allusive meaning and subtext; Galindo’s instrument titled ‘Zapatello’, modelled after DaVinci’s ‘il martello a camme’, animated a row of discarded shoes rigged on a hand-cranked rotating machine.
As they stamped on the stretched drum skin, the off-centre rhythm rose and fell with the speed of Galindo’s hand-cranking, suggesting anxious running, the pace of the journey. Centred through the rotating shaft were wooden shooting range targets; human silhouettes, with what amounts to a deadly scoreboard on them. A large, sculptural shaker comprised of angular welded spikes rattled with spent shotgun shell casings trailing from the points. It made me think not only of the theme of escape and risk of shooting, but of desert history, the native population displacement caused by atomic testing; the shaker almost impressionistically resembling the demon core of a nuclear weapon, or a great tyre spike. They were shuffling, oddly beautiful performances comprised of items of loss and hostility, enabling effective political and emotive commentary without purely existing as touristic, 1:1 reproductions or documentations of sensitive borderscape politics. Using found objects connects a potentially abstract and complex issue to the desert earth, grounding us in a sense of the unseen life experiences their former owners went through.
Bibliography:
Kirkegaard, J. (2021) ‘Listening to the Heart: Jacob Kirkegaard by Julie Martin’. Interviewed by J. Martin for BOMB Magazine, 5 March. Available at: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2021/03/05/jacob-kirkegaard-interviewed/ (Accessed: 12 May 2024)
Amon Carter Museum of American Art (2016) Border Cantos: Richard Misrach|Guillermo Galindo. Available at: https://www.cartermuseum.org/exhibitions/border-cantos-richard-misrach-guillermo-galindo (Accessed: 12 May 2024).